"In the coming two weeks of the French campaign, Marine Le Pen’s challenge is to break through a wall of voter antipathy that she inherited from her father. Emmanuel Macron’s task is to persuade the French he has the gravitas and experience to be president.

The far-right Le Pen and centrist Macron both took just under a quarter of the vote in a contest with 11 candidates. Now they must convince the rest of the population that they have what it takes to lead the country after the May 7 runoff.

The next round will see two radically different visions. Macron embraces globalization and European integration, Le Pen channels the forces of discontent that triggered Brexit and brought Donald Trump to power. The runoff will also be unique in that it will be the first contested by neither of the major parties, giving Macron, 39, and Le Pen, 48, space to try to forge alliances that might have seemed unlikely until recently.

“Marine Le Pen’s toughest job is to break the traditional glass ceiling which her father Jean-Marie also suffered from,” said Yves-Marie Cann, a pollster at Elabe. “Even if her image is better than his was, the truth remains that most voters say they don’t share her ideas and have a bad opinion of the Front.”

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Macron has still to convince voters he has the aura of a head of state and can reach out to a nation in which 40 percent of the electorate opted for anti-European extremes on both left and right. A snap Ipsos survey late on Sunday suggested that Macron, who’s aiming to be the country’s youngest head of state, would win by 62 percent to 38 percent for Le Pen, who would be the country’s first female president.

“Macron is not yet the president the French want,” said Frederic Lazorthes, a communications consultant who was an adviser to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. “He needs to show that he can assume the great responsibility of a nation that is divided and convince the country that it can thrive in a globalized world.”

Euro Pledge

Runoffs are not traditionally fertile territory for Le Pen’s National Front. In the 2002 presidency race, in local elections and in the 2015 regional elections -- when it scored more than 40 percent of the vote at times -- the party performed strongly in the first round but then was defeated in the second.

While Le Pen’s signature pledge on taking France out of the euro has served to keep her fractious party in line during the campaign, it will stop her winning because most voters want to keep their currency, said Dominique Reynie, a professor of political science at the Sciences Po institute in Paris.

In her final rallies, Le Pen at times backed away from her euro pledge and steered toward the other themes that most strike a chord with her electorate: Islam, immigration, national identity and terrorism. She may need to go further than that if she’s to win the ultimate prize.

Marine Le Pen on April 23.

Photographer: Marlene Awaad/Bloomberg

“She’ll have to drop her plan to leave the euro -- it’s not enough to wash her hands of the issue by promising a referendum,” Reynie said. “If she doesn’t change her line on the euro, she’s beaten.”

Le Pen would also need to gather roughly two-and-a half-times as many votes to win, especially among older voters and the middle- and upper-middle classes among whom she is weak, according to Elabe’s Cann.

In a foretaste of the battleground ahead, Macron sought in his speech on Sunday to portray himself as a force for unity -- he has repeatedly dismissed Le Pen as a divisive figure. He pledged to be the “president of all the people of France, the president of the patriots against the nationalists,” in a dig at Le Pen’s stress on nationalist values.

“There are not several Frances, there is one,” Macron said. He listed his defeated rivals one by one, and then thanked his supporters for applauding them, an early attempt to forge the anti-Le Pen unity of mainstream and other forces which he needs to win.

Macron may well succeed in his appeal. “We expect most of those French voters who backed Fillon and the official Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon today to switch to Macron in the second round,” Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, wrote in a note to clients.

‘Least Divisive’

“Macron has been by far the least divisive of the major candidates,” Schmieding said. “That should enable him to attract extra support.” Both Republican candidate Francois Fillon and Hamon endorsed Macron on Sunday.

Still, Le Pen will argue that only she can bring real change to France. More than 40 percent of the electorate voted for parties that want to upend the political order once support for the leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon is taken into account. And she can also point to Macron’s background as an investment banker and a graduate of one of France’s elite universities.

In her speech after the earliest results, Le Pen said that at stake was nothing less than “savage globalization that threatens our civilization.”

“The French have a very simple choice: either we continue on the road of total deregulation, without borders and without protection with the consequence of job losses abroad, unfair global competition, mass immigration and the free movement of terrorists. It’s the choice of money as king,” Le Pen said.

“Or you can choose France -- with borders that protect our jobs and our purchasing power,” she added."

Macron told French radio: “This threat, this imponderable problem, is part of our daily lives for the years to come. I would like to express all my support for our police forces and more generally the forces of law and order. I am particularly thinking of the victim’s family.”

For globalists, it's better to declare Terrorism as "imponderable problems" than to discuss the cause.

I am so pleased at Macron's ascent. Liberalism is not dead. This is a choice between freedom and fascism.

I wouldn't go so far as to say Macron is a fascist, MT. But the freedom from tyranny of the Muslim horde once they are sent back under Le Pen would definitely be something the real French people would welcome I'm sure.

How any self-respecting man can vote for someone who married someone 25 years older than himself is beyond me. Tells us all we need to know at what a complete tosser the guy is.

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

Donald is 24 years older than Melania, so that doesn't seem to indicate inelectability.

Not at all. Biology my good man. Women's peak fertility is from 18-26. Men's much much longer. Makes perfect sense that men are older in order to provide for their families with healthy offspring. A woman 25 years your senior? An admission your market value as a man is worthless.

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

Not at all. Biology my good man. Women's peak fertility is from 18-26. Men's much much longer. Makes perfect sense that men are older in order to provide for their families with healthy offspring. A woman 25 years your senior? An admission your market value as a man is worthless.

I love it when you post things like this.

GhostWriter and Moving Target like this

“Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life. It's pure and it's real. It moves, it heals.” - Tom Petty

I wouldn't go so far as to say Macron is a fascist, MT. But the freedom from tyranny of the Muslim horde once they are sent back under Le Pen would definitely be something the real French people would welcome I'm sure.

How any self-respecting man can vote for someone who married someone 25 years older than himself is beyond me. Tells us all we need to know at what a complete tosser the guy is.

OK, either I was ambiguous or you deliberately misunderstood, so to clarify my position: Vive Macron! Vive l'En Marche!

Curious, why are the "cockolders" more broken than those who engage in "behaviours derived from pornography such as spanking, facial ejaculation, and ‘penis slapping’?"

Well I do think pornography is one of the cultural scourges that is helping in the ruination of the West; a cleverly devised plot by those who want to see America's demise.

But to address your point, the default biological position for men is one of dominance and protection of their women (thank you testosterone). The cuckholded men who enjoy seeing their partner banged up by another are defective and broken and will likely come to their just demise early on when America falls apart (too weak to defend themselves). At least on the other side the men are acting out their dominance, albeit in pornified ways.

The submission and feminization of the Western male over the last 50 years is one of the great tragedies we've witnessed. Liberalism is naturally effeminate and weak and it has wreaked havoc on the greatest culture that man has built. Any man that allows another, by definition, stronger man, have sex with his wife, is weak and broken.

(Ready for heads to explode in 3, 2, 1....)

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

Well I do think pornography is one of the cultural scourges that is helping in the ruination of the West; a cleverly devised plot by those who want to see America's demise.

But to address your point, the default biological position for men is one of dominance and protection of their women (thank you testosterone). The cuckholded men who enjoy seeing their partner banged up by another are defective and broken and will likely come to their just demise early on when America falls apart (too weak to defend themselves). At least on the other side the men are acting out their dominance, albeit in pornified ways.

The submission and feminization of the Western male over the last 50 years is one of the great tragedies we've witnessed. Liberalism is naturally effeminate and weak and it has wreaked havoc on the greatest culture that man has built. Any man that allows another, by definition, stronger man, have sex with his wife, is weak and broken.

(Ready for heads to explode in 3, 2, 1....)

This is fascism in a nutshell. Male potency, strong leadership, weakness / corruption... when have we heard this before? It's taken you a long time to reveal yourself - prior to this I thought you were just a bog-standard xenophobe.

This is fascism in a nutshell. Make potency, strong leaders, weak corruption... when have we heard this before? It's taken you a long time to reveal yourself - prior to this I thought you were just a bog-standard xenophobe.

You really have no idea what fascism is. That's almost laughable you tried to connect the two. Look at your London mayor and his new hate crime online task force that he just announced. The fascists are your comrades MT.

But since you're one of the science fetishists here, lighten me with the pertinent science as to why I am wrong. You can too RD. Regale me with your scientific tales of biological equality. I'll grab the popcorn.

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.